Spaced Out

July 17, 2001

https://www.smartertimes.com/481/spaced-out

An editorial in today's New York Times says that boost-phase intercept systems -- in which an enemy missile is destroyed in the launch phase, over enemy soil -- "have some clear technological and diplomatic advantages" over other missile defense possibilities.

"They home in on an enemy missile when it is still moving relatively slowly, is unlikely to be surrounded by decoys and is trailed by a hot and bright plume of rocket exhaust," the Times says. Fair enough.

Then the Times says, "The interceptor rockets, whether based on land or sea, would need to be situated very close to the specific countries being defended against and would pose no threat to the missile forces of other countries, like Russia and China." This sentence is full of flawed assumptions. For one thing, it totally ignores the most promising boost-phase intercept technology: space-based lasers. The speed of a laser reduces the "very close" problem, and a space-based laser system could be used against Chinese or Russian missiles as easily as against Iranian, Iraqi or North Korean missiles -- or even, in the worst case, against an accidental American launch.

The Times seems to see as an "advantage" a system's inability to be used against China or Russia. (The next sentence of the editorial, after the one about how the systems pose no threat to China or Russia, begins "but these systems also have important drawbacks.") That is absurd. Russia has the most nuclear missiles aimed at America, and Communist China's missile threat is so serious that the president of free China on Taiwan is beseeching America to join it in missile defense. A ship-based theater missile-defense on an Aegis cruiser may be enough to defend Taiwan, but the Times editorialists earlier came out against selling even that to the free Chinese. If America is going to spend the money and technological effort to develop and deploy a missile defense, it might as well be one that doesn't leave us vulnerable to penetration by a Chinese or Russian missile launch. When and if such a missile hits an American city, it sure will be interesting to watch the Times editorialists explain how our defenselessness constitutes an "advantage."

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